Dark Nights
by CoffeeKat
Summary: Companion piece to Deep and Dark Eyes. Relena POV.


AN:  Doesn't belong to me.  This is a companion piece to Deep and Dark Eyes.  Not necessary to have read the other one first.  This is Relena's POV.  Mind it will seem a little surreal, but I'm trying to capture the change in the girl, not the girl we know.

Dark Nights

I dreamt of you last night.  Woke, twisted in sheets and sweat, panting, heart beating through my chest.  The room was silent, streetlight streaming in through the windows, turning everything into gray and shadows.  I pulled the blanket up around my bare shoulders, feeling like a child again, lost in the middle of a bed too big for one person.

                The blanket's warm and secure, and if I close my eyes I can almost imagine it's really your arms.  But the fabric never feels like skin, and I'm left remembering that I am alone in the world with a bedspread.  You used to be my safety, my security, my shield against the storm.  And then you left me to the hurricane; the beating, crashing fury that grew as my waist grew.  And when it died down – though it never really died, just subsided – I was left choking on the shore, tired and broken, with her in my arms.             

                The door is open, a rectangle of black in the wall.  Through it I can hear the sounds of night; people stirring far way in other apartments, appliances humming down, floorboards settling, the sigh as our daughter moves in her sleep. 

                When the insomnia overcomes me, I watch her sleep.  Some of these nights, most of these nights I hate her so much.  So inhumanly.  So un-motherly.  I cry, wracking, wild sobs for hating her, for the life I give her, for what she took from me, for what you took from me, for what I dreamed of, for what we never were.  In the mornings I wake on the floor where I had collapsed the night before, wound in the blanket, while she looks down on me from her crib smiling.

                She looks down on me with your eyes, the deep and dark eyes.  Eyes I used to study, watching them cloud and clear as emotions passed.  Eyes whose lids I would trace in their sleep.  Eyes I think I see every day, on every person in the store or on the street.  And I'm always turning to get another glance at the strangers who pass as my heart leaps up into my throat.

                Always with her eyes, so like you.  Stronger reminder of what she took away, of what she banished from my life.  I try so hard to keep from blaming her.  Try so hard to blame myself.  I know, I'm nothing you would love anymore.  I'm a beast, hating my child, blaming her for what happened long before she came into the world.  You wouldn't love me anymore, you'd be repulsed.  No longer beautiful, no longer happy, no longer ideal.

                You'd be so angry with me for letting life slip away like this.  For living in a tiny two bedroom apartment, where my daughter – our daughter – plays on the fire escape, and the neighbors are busted regularly for dealing.  You'd be so angry with me for forgetting what I was.  For no longer caring about people beyond how they can help me, for caring only how I can survive day to day.  You'd be so angry with me for dreaming of you still.  For loving you despite your best efforts to make me hate you, to make yourself a monster in my eyes.  You'd be so angry with me for losing everyone.  For cutting out the people who tried to help and letting my friendships die.

                This isn't the life I thought we'd live.  This isn't the way it's supposed to be.  But I'm tired.  I'm tired of raging against the world, against my place.  I can no longer fight for my ideals.  I no longer have ideals.  Somewhere they died, not fit for a life in which I lived from today to tomorrow, with no thought for the future.  There's just her now, the only thing left for me to fight for, and even then it's a weak, half-beaten battle.  

I struggle for her because you'd want me to.  Because you'd love her wholly, uncomplicatedly if you knew her.  You probably love her already, just knowing she's alive.  Knowing that protecting her is protecting for you, that fighting for her is fighting for you, that loving her is loving for you – I do it.  Strength through the storm, and I draw on you to remind me why I love this little girl.

And I do love her.  Beneath the anger and the blame and the hatred, I love her.  I love her for her skill with machines.  I love her for being silent and reserved.  I love her for her innate sense of timing.  I love her for her eyes.  She reflects you, and I, so starved for your being as I sink beneath the waves, hold on to her and love her.  I love her – even as I hate her – with such strength, such force, such utter devotion that it makes me weak.

I curl up on the bed, lonely and aching with grief and longing.  Down the hall I can hear her stir and breathe and sigh.  Tonight, I'll dream of you, of me, of what we used to be, of what we would have been.  I'll dream of you and me and her, a make-believe world where I look at her and you and know only love untainted.  Sighing, I shuffle around the shadowy room and unlock all the windows.  Though I know you banished yourself from my life – our life – I still hope that you will come in the night.  One last hope that burns in the growing darkness.


End file.
